Day 7 - Metz

Today we woke up early as the world trolley races were happening outside on the cobbles at 6am, or so it seemed. Later when we emerged from the room there was a market setup, so that may have been the actual reason.

We had breakfast in the hotel, where we abused the cold meat buffet.

On our way to check if our bikes were still there we had to go past the kebab shop that was closed last night… they were open for business at 9am, and people were in there tucking into a doner!

Tommo re-engineered his fix on his bike and has now perfected the gaffer tape solution. You’ll see this as an optional extra on BMWs website soon I bet!

We had great roads before the satnav took us off onto a single lane gravel donkey track, it was probably 3mm shorter or something. Unfortunately just after we were back on the good roads the rain hit for a bit. It wasn’t bad but bad enough to make the roads damp.

We stopped for food in a roadside french restaurant. The waitress didn’t speak English so we were fumbling through and she wasn’t happy. It turns out that despite the menu saying otherwise, she only had fish and as Mark doesn’t like fish we told her we’d just have drinks. That was it, how dare we just order drinks! She whipped away the knives and forks, pulled the table cloth and stropped away shouting in French. She was won the award for Mardy waitress, and we’ve had a few!

Just when we’d finished not eating some old people came up to us who were English and decided that because we were from the same island as them, we’d like to hear their life stories. They waffled on for about an hour and we tried to be polite for a while but in the end we were both playing on our phones whilst they told us what colour their aunts shoes used to be when she got on the train or some other boring shit.

As we were now struggling to stay awake we hit the motorway to get there quickly. Once in Metz we struggled with the satnav that took us around the town 3 times and the wrong way down a one way street. We made it alive though.

At check in, things went wrong as it turns out that a Tommo had only booked a single room. Luckily they had a spare room but we’d have to pay 40 euros more. Fair enough, so we went to park the bikes whilst she sorted that out then when we got back she said that we could have the twin room for free, we just had to pay for the extra breakfast. Then she apologised because she didn’t actually have any standard rooms left, so she’d have to give us a superior room for the same price. Ok then!

We went church hunting and found a massive cathedral and a nice church on the river, so we filled up our memory cards taking pics of them.

We stopped for some beers and food in a busy part of town and treated ourselves to some tasty crepes afterwards at one of the many places in the crepe District.

 

We started making our way back to the hotel and caught the end of an impressive light show projected against the cathedral.

Tommo then felt the need for a floater in the last bar which he thoroughly enjoyed